“His departure.”
She was silent. For a moment she tried to meet his eyes, then hastily averted her own.
“What were you doing?” Mason asked.
She smiled wanly and said, “I was practicing law.”
“Doing what?”
“Practicing law. I thought I knew the answer and I thought it was an answer you didn’t want to give him. He kept asking me what he could do, so I told him.”
“Which was what?” Mason asked, his voice cold.
“They’re in love,” Della Street said. “They’d been wanting to get married. Mosher Higley prevented them. Then after Mosher Higley’s death it wouldn’t have looked exactly right for—”
“In other words, you told them to get married. Is that it?” Mason asked.
“That’s it,” she said. “I told him if he married her there was no power on earth that could make him testify; that if he didn’t marry her they could force the testimony from him and the fact that he was in love with her would make it all the more damaging.”
Mason was silent for several seconds.
“Angry?” she asked.
“No,” Mason said, grinning. “You did about the only thing you could have done, but I hope the Bar Association Committee on the Unauthorized Practice of Law doesn’t get hold of you, young lady.”
She smiled. “Gosh, I’m glad you aren’t mad, Chief, but he had put you in an impossible position. Once he told you about finding the cyanide and knowing that there were four tablets missing... well, no matter what you did after that you’d be vulnerable. After all, he wasn’t your client. He’s a witness. He told you a very material fact. If you had tried to suppress that fact or if you had told him not to tell the police you’d have been in an impossible position legally. I know enough law to know that.
“I also know that if he ever gets on the stand and tells his story, the jury will convict Nadine Farr. They’ll hate to do it because John Locke seems such a nice young fellow, but the district attorney will point out that after all the greatest kindness the jury can do the young lover will be to keep him from marrying a murderess.
“So when he told me that he had one hunch, one place where he thought he could locate Nadine, that if she was there the police wouldn’t be looking there and that if he could find her there the police wouldn’t locate him, I... well, I told him that you quite probably wouldn’t want to be put in the position of telling him so but that if he and Nadine managed to get across to Yuma and got married before the authorities picked them up they couldn’t force him to testify against her and in all probability the case would blow up.”
“Of course,” Mason said, “you know what the newspapers will do. They’ll feature statements by the police and the district attorney. It will look as though Nadine was guilty of murder and they covered it up by a hasty marriage.”
“I know,” Della Street said. “It will take them a long while to live it down, but if she’s convicted of murder and sent to prison it would take even longer for her to live it down, in case she ever got out. And by the time she got out, her youth would be gone, her life would be gone, and her lover would be gone. John Locke would eat his heart out for a few years and then some sympathetic girl would place his poor little aching head on her bosom, gently stroke his hair back from his forehead, sympathize with him, offer to be a sister to him and wind up being his wife.”
“In other words, you don’t think he loves her enough to wait,” Mason said.
“He does now,” she told him, “but who can stand the strain of years of waiting? Think of all the competition there is in the matrimonial market. Some smart little babe will be just waiting to dish up the sympathetic sisterly approach.”
“All right,” Mason said. “I’m glad you did it, Della. If we’d been able to locate her, I’d probably have suggested either Yuma or Las Vegas and a marriage.”
“Well, you didn’t suggest anything of the sort,” Della Street said. “Your conscience is absolutely clear. I told him that as a lawyer you probably wouldn’t want to suggest that he marry the defendant in order to keep from testifying against her, but that if he acted on an impulse and went ahead and married the girl he couldn’t be put on the stand as a witness against her.”
Mason said, “Okay. I’ve got a line on Jackson Newburn. Let’s go see what he has to say.”
“I’ll bet he puts on an act of righteous indignation and denies he was anywhere near Nadine,” Della Street said.
“He already has, to Paul Drake, over the phone,” Mason told her.
“Suppose it’s a case of mistaken identity?” Della Street asked.
“In that case I’m going to lead with my chin.”
“You don’t think—?”
“No. I think Jackson Newburn is a cool, polished liar.”
“And that you can break him down?”
“I can try.”
Mason drove the car out to the Wildcat Club on West Adams Street.
“Want a witness?” Della Street asked as he parked the car.
“I want one,” Mason told her, “but I can probably accomplish a lot more without one. Sit in the car, Della, and hold the fort.”
The Wildcat Exploration and Development Club was in a house which some thirty years ago had been an elegant mansion. But the growth of the city had surrounded it, and others as fine, with businesses and apartments. Finally the tenants had moved away, the houses had yielded to pressure and been given over to millinery shops, cleaning establishments, dancing academies, business colleges and similar activities.
The Wildcat Club had purchased one of these mansions and, finding it ideally suited for their purposes, had completely renovated the building so that it stood out as a bright spot against the drab background of once proud houses, now badly in need of paint, awaiting the inevitable end in somber disarray.
Mason ran up the steps to the wide, illuminated porch, and rang the bell. A colored attendant in livery opened the door. Mason stated his errand.
“Just a moment,” the man said. “I’ll see if he’s here.”
He went back in and closed the door.
Mason waited.
Some two minutes later the door opened. A slender, well-knit man in the middle thirties, with gray penetrating eyes, and the quick step of an athlete, extended his hand.
“Mason?” he asked.
“That’s right. You’re Newburn?”
“Right.”
They shook hands.
“You’ll pardon me,” Newburn said, “if I don’t invite you in. There are quite a few club members here and you’re rather well known. The interview might be... misconstrued.”
“That’s quite all right,” Mason said. “I have my car parked at the curb. We can talk there.”
“Are you alone?”
“My secretary is with me. I—”
“Well then, let’s move over here to the corner of the porch. It’s as good a place as any.”
Newburn, without waiting for Mason’s acquiescence, walked quickly over to the far corner of the porch away from the direct illumination of the light. He turned back toward Mason.
“I had rather an annoying experience tonight.”
“Yes?” Mason asked.
“Someone on the phone, some detective agency or other, insisted that I’d been with Nadine Farr earlier in the evening.”
“You found that embarrassing?” Mason asked.
“Let’s say that I found it annoying.”
“Why?”
“Because I wasn’t with her.”
“You know her?”
“Naturally.”
“Is there any reason why you should be annoyed at the suggestion that you had been talking with her?”
“Let’s get this straight, Mason,” Newburn said. “I’m married. My wife is broad-minded, intelligent and attractive, but she’s feminine and human. She has an idea that Nadine Farr wouldn’t be at all averse to having an affair with me. There’s absolutely no foundation for any such feeling on my wife’s part, but it exists. Therefore any insinuation that I was with Nadine Farr this afternoon or evening would be exceedingly annoying. I don’t know who employed the detective who made that insinuation, but if any such statement is made in the presence of witnesses, publicized or given to the press, I intend to sue whoever is responsible. Do I make myself plain?”